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Anne Cuthbert Knight
Anne Cuthbert Knight (1788 - 15 March 1860) was a Scottish poet and an early Canadian educator. Susan Mann Trofimenkoff, Rae, Anne Cuthbert, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003–. Web, July 28, 2016. Life Knight was born Anne Cuthbert Rae near Aberdeen, the eldest child of Margaret (Cuthbert) and John Rae. Her father was a merchant in Aberdeenshire, where she was privately educated.Anne Cuthbert Knight (1788-1860), English Poetry, 1579-1830, Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. July 28, 2016. She married merchant James Innis Knight 3 July 1810. The couple traveled to Canada with their infant son in 1811. In 1812 they returned to Scotland, where Knight wrote her two long poems, Home: A poem and A Year in Canada. They immigrated to Canada in 1815, settling in Montreal.Susan Birkwood, Introduction, A Year in Canada. Canadian Poetry, Web, July 28, 2016. After James Knight died in 1816, Anne Cuthbert Knight taught school in Montreal. On 8 May 1820 she married another Scot, James Fleming. She published in the Literary Garland.Fleming, Anne Cuthbert Rae Knight, Canada's Early Women Writers, Digital Collections, Simon Fraser University. Web, July 28, 2016. Later in life she pursued a career as an educator, authoring several textbooks. She died in Abbotsford, Lower Canada (now Quebec). Writing Home: A poem "deals with all aspects of the concept of home — the definition of 'home' encompassing both the private sphere and the public domain, domesticity and patriotism. Concerned with those forces that threaten the integrity of what she considers to be 'home,' Knight is as interested in marital strife on the domestic front as she is in the invasion of a country by hostile or colonizing interests. Canada is one of the homelands contemplated in the poem because of the interest it affords as the potential site of an invasion by the Americans.... "Canada is, of course, the focus of A Year in Canada, one of the earliest published English-language texts by women concerning this country. Appended to the representation of life in Upper and Lower Canada in the five-parts of the poem (which employ the Spenserian stanza form and a variant of it using an ababcdcdd rhyme scheme)"Thomson’s presence may ... be felt in Knight’s use of the Spenserian stanza, the form employed in The Castle of Indolence (1748), though James Beattie’s The Minstrel (1771) may have been a stronger influence in this regard. According to Everard H. King, after Thomson’s The Castle of Indolence, "the Spenserian stanza declined in quality, so that, by the mid-eighteenth century, its frequent appearances were often met by the scorn of the critics.... But Johnson’s unqualified praise for The Minstrel indicates that he had changed his mind about the Spenserian stanza, at least as it had been used by Beattie. The popularity of the poem was probably the major cause of the great revival of interest in Spenser in the second half of the eighteenth century" (104). Another Scottish poet to use the form was Robert Burns in The Cotter’s Saturday Night, 1786." Birkwood, Introduction. is a series of brief prose observations made during her travels through the provinces that explain and expand upon particular lines and references.... Knight describes such things as methods of transportation, the making of maple sugar, the great wealth of the soil, and the inadequate agricultural practices of the French Canadian farmers. Her account is notable, however, for its movement away from lengthy descriptions of such topographical features as the St. Laurence River and Niagara Falls, for Knight chooses instead to transport her audience to small settlements such as that of Glengarry (in what is now Eastern Ontario). Depicting scenes of rural life within different cultural communities, she creates her own poetic picture of the Scottish immigrant, of the Native North American, and of the French Canadian, sometimes supporting, sometimes refuting the opinions of earlier commentators, but always assuming a position of sympathetic tolerance." Recognition Her work was anthologized in Wreath of Canadian Song, 1910. Publications Poetry *''Home: A poem''. Edinburgh: J. & C. Muirhead, 1815. *''A Year in Canada, and other poems. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, for Doig & Stirling / Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London, 1816. Juvenile *''First Book for Canadian Children. 1843. *''Views of Canadian Scenery: For Canadian children''. Hamilton, ON: privately published, printed by Ruthven's Book & Job Office, 1843. *''The Prompter: Containing the principles of the English language''. Montreal: Lovell & Gibson, 1844. *''Progressive Exercises on the English Language''. 1845. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = Mrs Fleming 1860, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, July 28, 2016. See also *List of British poets References External links ;Poems *"A Year in Canada" ;About *Anne Cuthbert Knight (1788-1860) at English Poetry, 1579-1830 *Rae, Anne Cuthbert in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Fleming, Anne Cuthbert Rae Knight, Canada's Early Women Writers Category:1788 births Category:1860 deaths Category:19th-century poets Category:19th-century women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Scottish poets Category:Scottish women writers